Free legal advice is worth exactly what you pay for it.
For a simple contract dispute? Great. Any second-year law student could probably even litigate such a case successfully. Patents, copyrights, and trademarks law is not so simple or straightforward, and few general practice attorneys have any experience in it.
It's a bit like going to a podiatrist for a neurological disorder. You might not get "wrong" advice, but you might not get the best advice either.
In this case, an argument could be made that since the INI file contains presentment information it's not just simple facts, it's a presentment of factual information. Technically, even if the only "presentment" is a header that describes the file and contains a valid copyright message distributing that data is a violation (although we saw in SCO v. damn near everybody depending on that can backfire).
That being said: assuming he's not distributing THEIR ini file (which it sounds like he isn't), he's probably got a good case. Whether he has the resources to fight it is something else entirely: you don't have to be right to file a lawsuit, you just have to have the money for the filing fees.
I hate to tell you this, but obnoxious printer drivers exist on Macs as well. Don't get me started on the Kodak AIO driver I had to drop to a Terminal window to finally extricate from my system.. which I only installed because I needed to print something to a relative's printer like a total of three times.
It has been my observation that "overqualified" means something quite specific.
"Overqualified" means that they know the working conditions are poor, and that you have enough experience to pretty much find another job the minute they start pushing the boundaries of employment to "unreasonable" limits (and they are expecting to). "Overqualified" means you won't put up with a lot of 60-hour work weeks salaried without overtime, you'll actually expect to be able to take sick leave and vacation time (and will complain loudly if you can't), and the ultimate corporate sin -- you may in fact know more than the boss does.
Somebody who's 22 and fresh out of college does not have experience on their side. They don't know that employees have rights, and additionally they don't have the pressures of a potential spouse demanding time and energy (not to mention kids).
They're right about assuming you will jump. Once they put the screws to you, you will, whereas they know they can treat a kid (or an H1B) like absolute shit.
At least on a well-engineered LTE network, "4G's" lag is no worse than a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem.
The problem is all the LTE backend hardware vendors are still working out software bugs. I work at a regional LTE provider, and you can't imagine the kinds of bugs that are still cropping up in the handoff and load-sharing stuff.
As a VoIP engineer, faxes are my own personal hell. No matter how hard we try, no matter what technology we implement, the best case scenario I've ever seen using faxes over any VoIP technology is around 98%. For a residential customer that uses a few faxes a year, the failures are infrequent enough that they don't care.
But for a doctor's office (who sometimes has to fax medical records to insurance providers), attorney's offices, real estate agents.. these people depend on faxes, and they expect 100% reliability. And even if they never print the document themselves, faxes fail.
No, you can't simply E-mail the PDF. They'll come up with a lot of reasons why, which just come down to "faxes aren't E-mail."
Because the power density of hydrocarbon fuels far outweighs any other technology presently available.
10 gallons of gasoline weighs around 90 pounds. In even a fairly inefficient car (like, say my 1985 Volkswagen Vanagon Camper) that will get the car about 150 miles. Most compact cars easily get twice that from a 10-gallon tank. My other car, a Volkswagen New Beetle (which is diesel), gets close to 40 MPG (easily over if you drive conservatively), and while that's burning diesel fuel, the weight is comparable. So, 150-400 miles on 90 pounds of fuel for your "inefficient hydrocarbon burning internal combustion engine."
By comparison, the LiIon batteries in many electric vehicles weighs in the range of 90-200 pounds, depending on the car (The Tesla, I'm told, weighs even more). At most, the range of a typical electric is 200 miles, and most manufacturers only promise between 100 and 150 miles between charging.
CNG weighs a little less (the fuel is significantly lighter, but the tank is heavier). LNG weighs about the same as gasoline. Both will range at the lower end of the MPG figures quoted above. Fuel cells may alter the dynamics a bit, but the best sources of hydrogen for them is still hydrocarbon fuels.. they will just push the kW/gallon energy output higher, potentially increasing MPG if we can get the weight of a fuel-cell generator and electric motors to something close to an internal combustion engine.
Pound for pound, hydrocarbon fuels provide the most bang for the pound of any power technology we presently have available.
The difference is it is almost impossible to put diesel into your gasoline automobile, at least in the United States. It is pumped from a different nozzle and hose, and the nozzle is typically a larger size that won't fit most passenger cars. It also is dyed a different color (green), smells different, and is labelled quite differently. You are even supposed to use a different color gas can (yellow) for transporting diesel.
Actually, you are wrong in the case of DOSBox Turbo. Section 3 says he must do one of three things: distribute the source ALWAYS with any copy (which he is not doing), distribute the source on demand to ANYBODY requesting it for the price of materials, or provide your modifications along with any offer of code from section 2.
Sorry, that sounds pretty clear. He didn't say "send me $4 by post and I'll mail you a floppy." He's demanding he purchase it through Google Play, which means the first clause of section 3 is in effect.
If you are a DOSBox developer and have code in the source tree, try sending a DMCA takedown notice to Google.
If you aren't, it sounds like you've done the first step, which is report it to the community at large. You might contact DOSBox's developer community and see if they even care.
What about the rights of the people who worked on it in the past, with the understanding that their "compensation" would be in the form of others donating their time to continue improvements?
From what I understand, the "heavy lifting" of getting a MSDOS emulator working has been done under these terms. DOSBot and DOSBox Turbo can replace the GPLed code that OTHER PEOPLE HAVE WRITTEN AND DESERVE TO BE COMPENSATED FOR with code they've written themselves if they don't agree to those terms.
No, it's technically not the exact same thing. When you walk out of a store with the CD, you are depriving the STORE of their personal property (the CD). There actually is a difference, both morally and ethically: "piracy" does not deprive anyone of their property, only the revenue from the sale.
I'm not disagreeing that both should be crimes. But the financial and civil penalties of the latter (copyright infringement) are actually HIGHER than the former. And that's not right, either.
Customers want to pay a cheaper rate for phone calls. Imagine that!
Wouldn't it be great if we had a defacto monopoly that made sure that there was adequate revenue from long-distance calls to subsidize local service in rural areas, so that it wouldn't cost $300 per month to have a telephone? High-volume users would, of course, be paying for all the infrastructure to complete calls. It might even have side effects, like if phone calls were more expensive it might cut down on telemarketing (because it would be less profitable). There'd be a lot of accountability in the system by default, as one company would be in control of all aspects of the call. If something broke, the customer had one number to call (hey, maybe make it an easy to dial number like 611 or something!), regardless of whether the problem was with their instrument, their local loop, or a trunking problem on the long distance lines. We'd need, of course, to regulate this company to ensure that they don't use their monopoly power excessively. But the upside is, this company could be (in effect) a research and development powerhouse. Who knows. This company might even do something radical like invent microelectronics as we know it, or create a powerful operating system that everybody emulates.
That's the irony here. Least-cost routing is one "equal and opposite reaction" to the "sender pays" system and the way calls are billed at termination.
Many of the rural exchange operators signed deals with carriers like Level3 who operated large dialup modem pools in rural exchanges near big cities are looking for ways to use that interconnect. It's really hard to feel "sorry" for these rural phone companies when they went out of their way to get this traffic in the first place 10-15 years ago, and now have these same carriers representing a significant chunk of their business instead of just 1-3%.
The "hard" in BitCoin is at the interface between BitCoin and actual money.
For starters, BitCoin is (by design) a volatile trading market, so from minute to minute the value of a BitCoin (against your local currency) fluctuates. In the past 30 days it's fluctuated by as much as 20% against the USD. "Real" currency markets don't fluctuate quite that dramatically. Compare BitCoin to USD to, say, USD to CAD over the last month. A Canadian merchant can pretty much accept a US Dollar at par value and know that within a couple of pennies he's getting the same value out of the currency.
We haven't even touched upon the fact that BitCoin currency exchanges aren't exactly bastions of security and stability. Most of them have been hacked at some point. There's absolutely no mechanism (by design) in the BitCoin system to "undo" a fraudulent transaction. Most people (rightfully so) aren't going to poke their credit card information into a system that can't guarantee the safety of their "money", and BitCoin has no such safety mechanisms.
It has now been long enough, and the demand has been high enough, that this should be irrelevant.
Look, I know how hard it is to get stuff fabbed. I handled the manufacturing for the P112 project. We use an OBSOLETE component in the mix, one that the only sources are "new old stock" and floor sweepings.
We were able to go from Gerbers to shipping in about a month. Granted, I live in the Pacific Northwest and have access to an awesome board fab and board stuffer.
With the quantity of JIT vendors out there, and now with the length of time the Pi has been shipping, there should be no more supply problems. And it sounds like the supply problems are largely the fault of the US resellers, not on the UK side of the pond.
This is a serious problem for both Android and iOS apps, and it's something that Blackberry had figured out from the very beginning. On the Blackberry, the user has a CHOICE as to whether to allow the apps access or not. You don't just get a screen saying "the app needs access to these things" and you have the options of exactly "take it or leave it." You get little checkboxes to say "No, the app can't access my personal contacts" and the app will still install, run, and work without access to your personal contacts.
Maybe I'm ok with an app having course location information, but not fine, and I'm willing to accept that the app may not be as useful that way. Maybe I don't want Facebook rummaging around in my personal contacts. Maybe I'm not comfortable with TV.com having the ability to record audio from my handset's microphone.
There's a flashlight app for Blackberry that wants access to the personal data on my phone. I say "nay nay", and the app works just fine.
So how about it, Android and iOS? Give the users REAL choices.
Well, not exactly. (Disclaimer: I actually work for a cable company..) But, a venue's foot traffic and business type does factor in to what they are charged.
In the case of a hotel, they are typically paying a fairly low rate for the programming compared to a normal "residential" subscriber. Also, there are sometimes extra perks the cable company throws in to the hotel's package: for example, the cable company may maintain the on-site infrastructure for the hotel, even providing the hotel with their own barker channel. Similarly, many apartment complexes (the ones that advertise "free cable!") have a similar arrangement.. we're not charging the property the $40 per subscriber that the basic cable package normally costs. We might charge a 50-unit property $500-1000, throw in a free cable modem or two (or some phone services) for the manager and/or the office, and call it even. We may even give the property a "kickback" or commission if they upsell the resident to a higher package.
However, if you are a restaurant or a bar, get ready to open your checkbook. Especially if you want the extended sports tiers.
It's also worth noting that some premium services aren't available to "commercial" (hotels are often considered "residential" for these purposes) customers for any price. I believe one of the movie channels (I don't recall which one) has a prohibition against commercial subs.
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Free legal advice is worth exactly what you pay for it.
For a simple contract dispute? Great. Any second-year law student could probably even litigate such a case successfully. Patents, copyrights, and trademarks law is not so simple or straightforward, and few general practice attorneys have any experience in it.
It's a bit like going to a podiatrist for a neurological disorder. You might not get "wrong" advice, but you might not get the best advice either.
Yes, but the PRESENTATION of facts is.
In this case, an argument could be made that since the INI file contains presentment information it's not just simple facts, it's a presentment of factual information. Technically, even if the only "presentment" is a header that describes the file and contains a valid copyright message distributing that data is a violation (although we saw in SCO v. damn near everybody depending on that can backfire).
That being said: assuming he's not distributing THEIR ini file (which it sounds like he isn't), he's probably got a good case. Whether he has the resources to fight it is something else entirely: you don't have to be right to file a lawsuit, you just have to have the money for the filing fees.
Wow, you're a crappy lawyer.
Not that much money, and not doing it can certainly hurt sales (as is evident with the lack of corporate uptake of Windows 8).
no HP printer drivers clogging up your screen..
I hate to tell you this, but obnoxious printer drivers exist on Macs as well. Don't get me started on the Kodak AIO driver I had to drop to a Terminal window to finally extricate from my system.. which I only installed because I needed to print something to a relative's printer like a total of three times.
To be fair, a modern IP network is more complicated than a crosspoint matrix.
It has been my observation that "overqualified" means something quite specific.
"Overqualified" means that they know the working conditions are poor, and that you have enough experience to pretty much find another job the minute they start pushing the boundaries of employment to "unreasonable" limits (and they are expecting to). "Overqualified" means you won't put up with a lot of 60-hour work weeks salaried without overtime, you'll actually expect to be able to take sick leave and vacation time (and will complain loudly if you can't), and the ultimate corporate sin -- you may in fact know more than the boss does.
Somebody who's 22 and fresh out of college does not have experience on their side. They don't know that employees have rights, and additionally they don't have the pressures of a potential spouse demanding time and energy (not to mention kids).
They're right about assuming you will jump. Once they put the screws to you, you will, whereas they know they can treat a kid (or an H1B) like absolute shit.
At least on a well-engineered LTE network, "4G's" lag is no worse than a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem.
The problem is all the LTE backend hardware vendors are still working out software bugs. I work at a regional LTE provider, and you can't imagine the kinds of bugs that are still cropping up in the handoff and load-sharing stuff.
As a VoIP engineer, faxes are my own personal hell. No matter how hard we try, no matter what technology we implement, the best case scenario I've ever seen using faxes over any VoIP technology is around 98%. For a residential customer that uses a few faxes a year, the failures are infrequent enough that they don't care.
But for a doctor's office (who sometimes has to fax medical records to insurance providers), attorney's offices, real estate agents.. these people depend on faxes, and they expect 100% reliability. And even if they never print the document themselves, faxes fail.
No, you can't simply E-mail the PDF. They'll come up with a lot of reasons why, which just come down to "faxes aren't E-mail."
A 1998 attack vector for a 1992 network.
Because the power density of hydrocarbon fuels far outweighs any other technology presently available.
10 gallons of gasoline weighs around 90 pounds. In even a fairly inefficient car (like, say my 1985 Volkswagen Vanagon Camper) that will get the car about 150 miles. Most compact cars easily get twice that from a 10-gallon tank. My other car, a Volkswagen New Beetle (which is diesel), gets close to 40 MPG (easily over if you drive conservatively), and while that's burning diesel fuel, the weight is comparable. So, 150-400 miles on 90 pounds of fuel for your "inefficient hydrocarbon burning internal combustion engine."
By comparison, the LiIon batteries in many electric vehicles weighs in the range of 90-200 pounds, depending on the car (The Tesla, I'm told, weighs even more). At most, the range of a typical electric is 200 miles, and most manufacturers only promise between 100 and 150 miles between charging.
CNG weighs a little less (the fuel is significantly lighter, but the tank is heavier). LNG weighs about the same as gasoline. Both will range at the lower end of the MPG figures quoted above. Fuel cells may alter the dynamics a bit, but the best sources of hydrogen for them is still hydrocarbon fuels.. they will just push the kW/gallon energy output higher, potentially increasing MPG if we can get the weight of a fuel-cell generator and electric motors to something close to an internal combustion engine.
Pound for pound, hydrocarbon fuels provide the most bang for the pound of any power technology we presently have available.
The difference is it is almost impossible to put diesel into your gasoline automobile, at least in the United States. It is pumped from a different nozzle and hose, and the nozzle is typically a larger size that won't fit most passenger cars. It also is dyed a different color (green), smells different, and is labelled quite differently. You are even supposed to use a different color gas can (yellow) for transporting diesel.
Hate to tell you this, but Obama isn't exactly a 99%er either.
Actually, you are wrong in the case of DOSBox Turbo. Section 3 says he must do one of three things: distribute the source ALWAYS with any copy (which he is not doing), distribute the source on demand to ANYBODY requesting it for the price of materials, or provide your modifications along with any offer of code from section 2.
Sorry, that sounds pretty clear. He didn't say "send me $4 by post and I'll mail you a floppy." He's demanding he purchase it through Google Play, which means the first clause of section 3 is in effect.
If you are a DOSBox developer and have code in the source tree, try sending a DMCA takedown notice to Google.
If you aren't, it sounds like you've done the first step, which is report it to the community at large. You might contact DOSBox's developer community and see if they even care.
What about the rights of the people who worked on it in the past, with the understanding that their "compensation" would be in the form of others donating their time to continue improvements?
From what I understand, the "heavy lifting" of getting a MSDOS emulator working has been done under these terms. DOSBot and DOSBox Turbo can replace the GPLed code that OTHER PEOPLE HAVE WRITTEN AND DESERVE TO BE COMPENSATED FOR with code they've written themselves if they don't agree to those terms.
No, it's technically not the exact same thing. When you walk out of a store with the CD, you are depriving the STORE of their personal property (the CD). There actually is a difference, both morally and ethically: "piracy" does not deprive anyone of their property, only the revenue from the sale.
I'm not disagreeing that both should be crimes. But the financial and civil penalties of the latter (copyright infringement) are actually HIGHER than the former. And that's not right, either.
Customers want to pay a cheaper rate for phone calls. Imagine that!
Wouldn't it be great if we had a defacto monopoly that made sure that there was adequate revenue from long-distance calls to subsidize local service in rural areas, so that it wouldn't cost $300 per month to have a telephone? High-volume users would, of course, be paying for all the infrastructure to complete calls. It might even have side effects, like if phone calls were more expensive it might cut down on telemarketing (because it would be less profitable). There'd be a lot of accountability in the system by default, as one company would be in control of all aspects of the call. If something broke, the customer had one number to call (hey, maybe make it an easy to dial number like 611 or something!), regardless of whether the problem was with their instrument, their local loop, or a trunking problem on the long distance lines. We'd need, of course, to regulate this company to ensure that they don't use their monopoly power excessively. But the upside is, this company could be (in effect) a research and development powerhouse. Who knows. This company might even do something radical like invent microelectronics as we know it, or create a powerful operating system that everybody emulates.
Wait.
That's the irony here. Least-cost routing is one "equal and opposite reaction" to the "sender pays" system and the way calls are billed at termination.
Many of the rural exchange operators signed deals with carriers like Level3 who operated large dialup modem pools in rural exchanges near big cities are looking for ways to use that interconnect. It's really hard to feel "sorry" for these rural phone companies when they went out of their way to get this traffic in the first place 10-15 years ago, and now have these same carriers representing a significant chunk of their business instead of just 1-3%.
My guess? The school has some backup software installed on the machine and the principal (or IT) just restored the most recent image, spyware and all.
The "hard" in BitCoin is at the interface between BitCoin and actual money.
For starters, BitCoin is (by design) a volatile trading market, so from minute to minute the value of a BitCoin (against your local currency) fluctuates. In the past 30 days it's fluctuated by as much as 20% against the USD. "Real" currency markets don't fluctuate quite that dramatically. Compare BitCoin to USD to, say, USD to CAD over the last month. A Canadian merchant can pretty much accept a US Dollar at par value and know that within a couple of pennies he's getting the same value out of the currency.
We haven't even touched upon the fact that BitCoin currency exchanges aren't exactly bastions of security and stability. Most of them have been hacked at some point. There's absolutely no mechanism (by design) in the BitCoin system to "undo" a fraudulent transaction. Most people (rightfully so) aren't going to poke their credit card information into a system that can't guarantee the safety of their "money", and BitCoin has no such safety mechanisms.
It has now been long enough, and the demand has been high enough, that this should be irrelevant.
Look, I know how hard it is to get stuff fabbed. I handled the manufacturing for the P112 project. We use an OBSOLETE component in the mix, one that the only sources are "new old stock" and floor sweepings.
We were able to go from Gerbers to shipping in about a month. Granted, I live in the Pacific Northwest and have access to an awesome board fab and board stuffer.
With the quantity of JIT vendors out there, and now with the length of time the Pi has been shipping, there should be no more supply problems. And it sounds like the supply problems are largely the fault of the US resellers, not on the UK side of the pond.
This is a serious problem for both Android and iOS apps, and it's something that Blackberry had figured out from the very beginning. On the Blackberry, the user has a CHOICE as to whether to allow the apps access or not. You don't just get a screen saying "the app needs access to these things" and you have the options of exactly "take it or leave it." You get little checkboxes to say "No, the app can't access my personal contacts" and the app will still install, run, and work without access to your personal contacts.
Maybe I'm ok with an app having course location information, but not fine, and I'm willing to accept that the app may not be as useful that way. Maybe I don't want Facebook rummaging around in my personal contacts. Maybe I'm not comfortable with TV.com having the ability to record audio from my handset's microphone.
There's a flashlight app for Blackberry that wants access to the personal data on my phone. I say "nay nay", and the app works just fine.
So how about it, Android and iOS? Give the users REAL choices.
You need to read your cable company service agreement. Some of them actually do contain such a clause.
Well, not exactly. (Disclaimer: I actually work for a cable company..) But, a venue's foot traffic and business type does factor in to what they are charged.
In the case of a hotel, they are typically paying a fairly low rate for the programming compared to a normal "residential" subscriber. Also, there are sometimes extra perks the cable company throws in to the hotel's package: for example, the cable company may maintain the on-site infrastructure for the hotel, even providing the hotel with their own barker channel. Similarly, many apartment complexes (the ones that advertise "free cable!") have a similar arrangement.. we're not charging the property the $40 per subscriber that the basic cable package normally costs. We might charge a 50-unit property $500-1000, throw in a free cable modem or two (or some phone services) for the manager and/or the office, and call it even. We may even give the property a "kickback" or commission if they upsell the resident to a higher package.
However, if you are a restaurant or a bar, get ready to open your checkbook. Especially if you want the extended sports tiers.
It's also worth noting that some premium services aren't available to "commercial" (hotels are often considered "residential" for these purposes) customers for any price. I believe one of the movie channels (I don't recall which one) has a prohibition against commercial subs.